Simulacrum
Reincarnations
Excerpt from Darren Bergstein Review
“… Sometimes brittle, often brutal, but never less than gripping, you could play this thing a hundred times and always get the sensation differently each exposure. Yowza.”
Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery
Excerpt From Liner Notes by PEK
“… Despite being a quartet instead of quintet for this set, we produced a prototypical Simulacrum session, thick with electronic sounds, horns, killer bass, and the broad palette percussion of an Evil Clown Livestream set…”
Reincarnations:
Simulacrum
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA – 24 June 2022
1) Reincarnations – 1:10:38
PEK – clarinet & contralto clarinets, alto, & tenor saxophones, mussette, alto flute, medieval horn, accordion, melodica, novation peak, moog subsequent, arp odyssey, Linnstrument controllers, theremin with moogerfooger, [d]ronin, 17 string bass, spring & chime rod boxes, Tibetan bowls, almglocken, crotales, glockenspiel, orchestral chimes, chimes, wood blocks, brontosaurus & tank bells, gongs, plate gong, temple blocks, balafon, xylophone, log drums, cow bells, Englephone
Bob Moores – Jackson electric guitar modded with built-in overdrive/distortion circuit and kill-switch played through Ampkit app on iPhone 13 Pro, softsynth emulators (including Mini-Moog) app on iPad, Mainstage softsynths on macBook Air, kracklebox, keyboards, electric trumpet with pickups on horn, mouthpiece and straight mute played through Axiom pedal and Ampkit app, kracklebox touch noise generator, novation peak, moog subsequent, Linnstrument controllers, cymbells, chimes, log drums, wood blocks, temple blocks, cow bells, brontosaurus and tank bells
Eric Zinman – synthesizer, drums
Albey onBass – fretless bass, signal processing, brontosaurus bell, gongs, almglocken
Joel Simches – Live to 2-track mix, real-time signal processing
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Full Video
Video Shorties
Darren Bergstein Review
SIMULACRUM Reincarnations (Evil Clown 9309; US) One track? Check. Seventy-minutes? Check. An instrument list that would gag a marauding Viking orchestra? Check. I am, of course, referring to another Evil Clown joint, spearheaded by the restless, unstoppable force that is Dave PEK, and along with his usual coterie of like-minded minions (Bob Moores, Eric Zinman, Joel Simches, and Albey onBass) they’re here to wreck and rock your world. Nicked as a further take under the Simulacrum guise, Reincarnations isn’t so much a re-upping of past glories or spirits having flown, but an all-out extension of the improvisational gusto this outfit regularly births onto an unsuspecting populace. A YouTube livestream broadcast in June of ’22, if you by perchance gazed upon Simulacrum duking it out in their little corner of the cosmos you’d have been nigh on overwhelmed, titillated, blown-back, and probably utterly fixated on their big, brash noise. PEK & Co., explore a more electronic-oriented part of the EC universe as Simulacrum, though PEK’s megalodon-sized assortment of horns and pipes still trace gargantuan contours in the burnt studio sky. But both his & Moore’s psychedelic ’tronix are the main arbiters of ‘pulse’ here, decorative, expansive, mysterious, & myth-making in their irruptions, chirrups, and fluctuations. The Sun Ra-esque tableau painted by these instruments are often augmented by strafing runs of bass and guitar/amp distortion, which can paint some air of Merzbowian menace across the music’s tumbling bow. Roughly 12+ minutes in, drums and cymbals fence in sharply-textured combat, while PEK blows fierce coils of Coltrane-colored intensity. Moore and Zinman seem to lock synthesized horns on numerous occasions, but the sheer magnitude of their collective din is virtually impossible to pick apart; theirs is a tightly-controlled noise. What remains remarkable across the Simulacrum catalog is that this stuff never seems to glorify or revel in its illustrious chaos: everything splayed out, improvised with vigor, executed with imaginative abandon, feels cohesive and adroitly-planned, which consistently says a great deal about these players. Sometimes brittle, often brutal, but never less than gripping, you could play this thing a hundred times and always get the sensation differently each exposure. Yowza.
Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery
Liner Notes by PEK
A new project that was conceived just prior to the Virus shut things down is Simulacrum. This new band is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring 3 the core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics. The basic idea of this band is to increase the amount of electronics, to keep the ancillary percussion and loose the drum set, along with PEK and Bob holding down the horn parts. Even without the drums, this set tilts more in the noise direction than typical of Metal Chaos Ensemble. Albey onBass (Balgochian) is an amazing bassist who played with Cecil Taylor in New York for over 10 years in the 00s and 10s. Albey and his wife Jane had moved to New Orleans and then New York, but have returned to the Boston area… Lucky us!! Albey has performed with a number of the Evil Clown ensembles, Leap of Faith, Leap of Faith Orchestra, Turbulence, Metal Chaos Ensemble, Simulacrum and Axioms (featuring the excellent poetry of Albey’s wife Jane SpokenWord).
Pianist/synth player/percussionist Eric Zinman has been an Evil Clown participant in several of the bands over time. In fact, long before Evil Clown came about, I played with Eric right after showing up in Boston to attend Berklee in 1989. Eric has also had a trio with Glynis Lomon and Syd Smart that was active throughout my long hiatus in the 00’s. Eric makes his debut appearance on this set on his synthesizer and a very compact drum kit containing a snare, a floor tom and 3 cymbals. At times, he plays one or the other, and at times he plays both at once – the keys with his right hand and the drums with his left hand.
This set was originally scheduled to be the core trio with Albey and Eric Zinman as the guests and Joel Simches at the mixer. The week of the performance, I heard from Eric Woods that he had a family obligation and would not be able to make the set. Since the ensembles are modular and somewhat difficult to schedule, I rarely ever cancel anything due to a scheduling issue of this kind. Ironically Eric Zinman had to withdraw from an early Simulacrum set and I have not managed yet to get the two Erics together on a Simulacrum session.
Despite being a quartet instead of quintet for this set, we produced a prototypical Simulacrum session, thick with electronic sounds, horns, killer bass, and the broad palette percussion of an Evil Clown Livestream set.
I like this set and I bet you will too.
PEK Out – 6/5/2022
Video Screen Grabs
